"Shall we give chase, Milady?" asked Neji. "Danzō is still within my sight."
Although it pained Sakura, she could not afford to drop everything and chase after Danzō now. If she weakened him further and Obito's faction of the Akatsuki snapped him up as a result, they would be one step closer to the end of the world.
"There's no point," Sakura replied glumly. "Danzō's like a cockroach; he runs fast, he has plenty of hidey-holes, and he won't die no matter how many times you step on him. We've got bigger fish to fry, and we don't have time to waste on him."
Danzō had lost many of his prized subordinates in the attack, so he was no longer an immediate priority. Although his network of informants was likely still intact, ensuring he would never be flying blind, he could no longer have a finger in every pie. Despite his newfound Jinchūriki power, he could not be everywhere at once, so he would be unable to leverage his influence properly.
And speaking of Danzō's subordinates…
"Time for a bit of field surgery," Sakura said, forming a hand seal as she unfurled a scroll from her thigh pouch. "Unseal!"
Sakura's set of surgical tools popped out in a puff of white smoke.
"I'm fine with only having one Byakugan," Hinata said weakly. "Sakura-chan, you don't have to trouble yourself over me…"
Neji, Tenten and Shikamaru had managed to take down a fair number of Root operatives during their surveillance mission, including Yamanaka Fū, to whom Danzō had entrusted the Byakugan he had stolen from Kumo when they had kidnapped Hinata three years ago.
"It's no trouble, really," Sakura said gently. "Now, just lie down over there while I extract your eye…"
Sakura looked to Karin, who was kneeling at Fū's side, busy unravelling the cursed seal that Danzō had placed on his eye to prevent anyone from obtaining it from his body.
"All done, onee-sama!" Karin chirped a few seconds later. "I managed to undo the Reverse Four Symbols Seal!"
Karin looked at her with upturned, puppy-dog eyes. She tilted her head slightly, clearly expecting a head pat as a reward for her hard work, but just as Sakura was reaching out to stroke her hair, she caught Ino's disapproving eye.
"I, er… good work, er… Uzumaki-san," Sakura said stiffly, retracting her hand.
Sakura crouched down next to Karin and popped Fū's Byakugan out of its socket, before snipping the optic stalk with her trusty enucleation scissors, all the while Karin stared at her in complete shock. Noticing Ino's smug look, Karin got up and stalked over to her, while Sakura went to Hinata's side, disinfecting the area around her face and injecting her with some painkillers.
"I know you said something to onee-sama, Fatty," Karin hissed. "Stay the hell out of our love life, or I'll seal you into a tampon and stuff you so far up you'll never see the light of day again!"
"Fatty!? Also, what love life!?" Ino spluttered. "I've gone further with Sakura than you ever have, and I don't even like girls that way, unlike you two perverts!"
"It's just neglect play!" Karin shot back. "A stupid normie like you wouldn't understand the deep love onee-sama and I share!"
Ino rolled her eyes.
This girl was hopelessly pathological, there was no helping such a lost cause. She'd be better off trying to convince a cat to become vegetarian. This was all Kusagakure's fault for mistreating her, she thought to herself, glowering at the village in the distance. They didn't deserve to be saved.
"There, all reattached," Sakura said, stepping back to admire her handiwork. "How do you feel, Hinata-chan?"
The eye-swap surgery had gone splendidly, despite Ino's and Karin's squabbling in the background.
"My eyes feel warm and a bit itchy… both of them," said Hinata, trying her best to restrain herself from rubbing them. "Is that normal?"
The sensation Hinata reported was the same one Sakura had experienced when her Sharingan and Byakugan had first awakened, and again when her Sharingan had evolved into its Mangekyō form. Sasuke had also described a dull, stuffy itchiness after the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan surgery, so if Sakura did not know better, she might have sworn that Hinata's eyes were evolving as well.
And Sakura's instincts were right: Hinata was in the middle of becoming someone else… something else.
"Maybe I should ask Nanashi-chan to swap eyes with me," Sakura wondered out loud. "It's about time these bad girls got an upgrade…"
Perhaps she would have Shizune perform the surgery. Although Shizune often blabbed about Tsunade's secret decisions to the Konoha Council, regularly betraying her confidence, she could still be trusted in matters concerning the safety of the village.
…
'You're quite the lucky girl, Hinata-kun,' said Ōtsutsuki Urashiki, her ghostly figure appearing without warning before Hinata, giving her quite a start. 'And here I thought your second Byakugan was lost for ever…'
Go away, Hinata mouthed.
Having successfully completed their mission, Team Sakura and Team Shikamaru were currently on their way back to the Hidden Leaf Village.
"Things are looking up for your friends, aren't they?" Urashiki continued, entirely unbothered. "I am not especially familiar with the monkey tactics favoured by you lesser life forms, but this development is a favourable one, is it not?"
The Leaf's invasion force, which had been lurking along the Grass border while innocently pretending to conduct military exercises, had now been repurposed into a defensive vanguard.
In an ironic turn of events, Kusagakure had officially invited their would-be invaders to enter the Land of Grass, in order to begin constructing a defensive line that would stretch across the entirety of the country. With their assistance, any infrastructure the Stone invaders might rely upon for their supply lines, such as bridges, would soon be reduced to rubble.
"It's a shame you've missed your chance to kill the primitive female with the overdeveloped mammary glands," Urashiki sighed, patting her own massive bust. "Now that she's your leader, your faction will find itself in quite the pinch without her."
"I would never!" Hinata hiccoughed, appalled.
"Are you not interested in the loud-mouthed orange monkey, whose superior seed you and the pink-haired one are competing for?" Urashiki asked, frowning. "I still do not understand what restrains you. If you wish to mate with the human male to produce powerful offspring, why not simply arrange a session with him?"
Hinata groaned.
"I do not even understand why you are competing in the first place," Urashiki said, shrugging. "Back when I was male, and alive for that matter, if a female wished to be inseminated by me in the traditional manner, the affair would usually be settled within the hour. Once she had obtained satisfaction, she would return to her domain, and we would never see each other again."
Urashiki paused.
"Of course, I was always careful to politely turn down propositions from high-ranking females who had consumed more chakra fruits than I had," she went on. "Female Ōtsutsuki clan members often attempt to devour the male they have just mated with, in order to preemptively replenish the chakra they will expend to produce offspring. I made that mistake once; never again."
"I AM NOT A PRAYING MANTIS!" Hinata shouted, red-faced. "I'M NOT EATING ANYONE'S HEADS—"
Sakura and the others glanced in her direction, their expressions clearly betraying the fact that they were wondering whether she had gone insane.
Hinata blushed even more fiercely.
Whenever she would begin to think that the Ōtsutsuki lady living rent-free inside her head might be reasoned with, she would say something utterly insane and remind her that, although she looked human, she was anything but.
"Like it or not, you are Ōtsutsuki now; you are no longer on the same level of existence as those monkeys," Urashiki concluded. "You will outlive your little friends by hundreds of thousands of their lifetimes, even without consuming a chakra fruit. You might think this is a lonely existence, but you will forget them, in time… because in the end, all that matters is longevity; keep accumulating powerful chakra, else wither away and die... or else you have to start all over again; it's really quite bothersome to die."